Plans to simplify Chinese characters provoke anger

The difference may only amount to the merest flick of a calligrapher's brush,
but government proposals to simplify a handful of Chinese characters have
caused an unexpected uproar.

Despite China's State Language Work Committee investing eight years consulting language experts and mulling over the changes, the new characters received short shrift from the Chinese publicPhoto: GETTY

By Peter Foster in Beijing

6:13PM BST 21 Oct 2009

Plans to simplify 44 characters – including the one for tea, or "cha" – have met with a chorus of disapproval since they were first put out for public consultation by China's ministry of education.

Despite China's State Language Work Committee investing eight years consulting language experts and mulling over the changes, the new characters received short shrift from the Chinese public.

An online poll conducted by Sina.com, a major Chinese web portal, found 92 per cent of people opposed the reforms with just four per cent backing them.

"The characters are treasures handed down by our ancestors, which we must respect and protect instead of changing randomly and out of sudden impulse," wrote one voter, "This is a very serious issue."

Others objected that changing the characters was unnecessary and would waste vast amounts of money as shopkeepers and tea-houses across China changed their signboards, and school textbooks were reprinted in their tens of millions.

"Look at these so-called experts, what are they doing?" fumed another dissenter. "They should spend their energies promoting improving education quality, not on such useless things." The authors of the changes, which in some cases amount to the removal of a tiny upward flick on the tail of one stroke, say they reflect the ongoing changes of China's living language. In some Beijing tea shops the 'flick' has already disappeared.

Other characters being changed include that for "new" (xin) and "dear" (qin), which would also lose their "tails".

The proposals would affect just over one per cent of the 3,500 most commonly used characters "to adapt to the requirements of the information era, the evolution of language and the development of society", the ministry said.

The number is trivial when compared with the major language reforms of the 1950s carried out by the new Communist government, when some 2,000 characters were simplified to boost literacy and make language more accessible and less elitist.

However the Chinese are deeply attached to their written language which is seen as a unifying force in a country of 1.3 billion people where spoken dialects differ from place to place, but the written language remains the same all over.

Olivier Venture, a Beijing-based researcher for the French School of Asian Studies, said: "Of the first measures taken by the first emperor after he defeated all other kingdoms, the unification of writing was not insignificant.

"It is extremely important – it is seen as the bond that unites Chinese culture, as part of the nation's identity. A lot of things change but people can always look to writing, even if in fact it always evolves."

Given the scale of the opposition, the officials appeared to be backtracking, saying that nothing had been decided that the discussions about the changes were 'ongoing', which is often bureaucratic code for 'going nowhere' when controversial issues are concerned.

"We are civil servants – our responsibility is to serve the people, and if the people are opposed, we will not budge," Li Ningming, an official at the committee, said in an interview with China's state television.